SDP and Forced Displacement

The global attention on refugees and internally displaced persons is reflected in the SDP sector’s variegated attempts to engage and support this target population through its programs. This chapter critically examines contemporary SDP programs and research in this area. The authors first provide an overview of SDP initiatives that work with refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). They then critically discuss some of the underlying assumptions on which SDP initiatives that work with refugees and IDPs are built, with specific reference to the existence of a deficit-based paradigm that associates refugee difference and marginality with deficit and lack, as well as threat and security risk. Following this discussion, the chapter presents an illustrative case study based on the second author’s ethnographic fieldwork with a development program in Colombia that seeks to engage IDPs through sport

SDP and Social Exclusion

This chapter examines the ways in which Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) initiatives seek to address social exclusion. It focuses explicitly on SDP within the global South, drawing on an empirical case study of a sport and gender empowerment program delivered in Lusaka, Zambia. The chapter initially considers how social exclusion can be theoretically and conceptually underpinned within global South contexts before outlining the specific ways sport is believed to contribute to addressing social exclusion. The case study outlines the ways in which a gender empowerment program sought to use sport to address key mechanisms responsible for excluding young women within Zambian society. The chapter presents a critical analysis of both the benefits and limitations of using sport in this context. It concludes by discussing potential ways to reconceptualise SDP that could maximise its capacity to tackle social exclusion within highly impoverished communities